At Home in Ugly

My 11 year-old just got off the phone with one of his friends from school. They had been making plans to get together today, Saturday, all week. Toby had really been looking forward to it. He studies hard, and generally, his reward is that he’s able to have friends over on the weekends.

This has been tricky lately. Both my kids started at a new school this year. It’s a charter school that focuses on math, science, and over all strong academic achievement. Kids from all over the Austin area attend this school, which means my kids make friends from all over town. Of course, there’s a down side to this. When hang-out sessions are arranged, the typical response from other kids’ parents is, “You live where!?”

We live in an area that is outside of Austin. Anyone who knows Austin knows that everything located on the western outskirts of town is golden. Suffice it to say, we don’t live west of town. We live east of town, in an area that reminds me of where I grew up.

To the casual observer, our part of town could easily be considered ugly.

It doesn’t matter what part of the country you live in. It’s likely anyone can relate to what I’m talking about. Every metropolitan area has sub-areas that are just a little unloved by commercial interests and people who sit in prominent positions in the county. I have lived in enough of these places to know that, ugly or not, it’s what feels like home.

Four years ago, when my husband landed a job here, and we came out for a house-hunting weekend, the first neighborhood we looked at was in Round Rock. I loved the house our agent took us to. It had a spiral staircase, exactly the kitchen I’d wanted, and a little desk area off the side of the kitchen that would have been perfect. I thought I was in love – that is, until I stepped outside into the front yard.

I looked around and immediately felt crestfallen. The neighborhood looked like something out of Desperate Housewives. The outfits were just a little too “too” for my taste. The smiles were rather stiff. I’ve always felt kind of funny about people who smile with their mouths while their eyes convey no change in emotion. The lawns were somewhat reminiscent of Astroturf, in all of their glorious “each blade of grass is the same exact height as any other” perfection. No, this would never work.

I can’t say exactly why, but too much perfection has always made me feel uneasy. Perhaps I’m just not used to it. Maybe it’s because I know that there is no such thing as perfection, and I like flaws placed where I can see them right off. Plus, imperfection and I are intimately acquainted. From my naturally frizzy hair, crooked nose, sun-spotted skin to my size-10 feet, I’m literally imperfect from head to toe. In fact, if imperfection were a person, we’d have each other’s names tattooed on our arms.

Even as a young person, I wanted my rock stars flawed. I’ve seen Elvis Costello live countless times. I think he’s a genius, and of course, it sort of tickles me to know that there’s a certain kind of person who would never find him appealing – who would never even give his music the time of day. His teeth are crooked, his nose is rather large, and I’m fairly certain he’s never without his glasses. The fact that a lot of his earlier work was about being rejected just reinforces my belief. He knows ugly, and that’s beautiful.

So, on that house-hunting trip four years ago, we kept looking for houses the next day. The first one we came to was in a subdivision that was located, seemingly, in the middle of nowhere.  I was fairly certain I’d seen a tumbleweed on the drive over, and nothing says “home” like tumbleweeds. No, maybe it wasn’t exactly easy to find. Did that have to be a bad thing? There wasn’t a Starbuck’s in sight, but Starbuck’s has always been a rare treat. (After all, I can’t drive to get coffee in the morning. I can’t drive without first having coffee!)  

I’m not saying our house is the dregs; in fact, it’s very much like that first house I fell in love with, only better-situated. Of course, some people will never make it all the way out to visit. For those who do, there are often freshly-baked muffins or cookies, always baked from scratch, because that’s the sort of thing that happens at home.

Life in the Margins

I am walking through the rows of lockers on the second floor of my high school. It’s fifth period, and most students are in class. I wonder at the quiet as I make my way to my locker. Really, I shouldn’t be here right now. The thing is, I forgot to bring my homework to class with me, and I asked for the restroom pass and came here instead. I can’t afford to get another zero on homework. In fact, it would be a tragedy, since I actually did it this time. 

As I reach the row my locker is in, I feel the dread start to churn in my stomach. No, I haven’t been caught by the school security guard, the guy some kids call “Jerry the Blueberry”. No, it’s jocks, and their proximity to my locker is bringing me down. I know I’m gonna get it.

I’m a girl, so they don’t hit me. (Hitting is a much cleaner, quicker, perhaps kinder brutality than what they have in store for me.) Their weapon of choice is ridicule. Today they pretend that one of them “likes” me. So basically, they’re using me to embarrass a member of their group. They keep ribbing the guy, saying, “There she is. Aren’t you gonna ask her out?” Then, of course, there’s the snickering.

It’s been over fifteen years, and I still remember what it was like to live on the fringes. I say “fringes” because this sort of thing was not limited to my school life. 

My cousins, and even a couple of uncles, enjoyed picking on me at family gatherings. I mean that they thoroughly enjoyed it. In their own rendition of the song “My Favorite Things”, torturing me would probably have featured prominently. Their devices were similar to those applied at school. 

In my teen years, I found out that a couple of my cousins referred to me as “Snuffaluffagus”. Naturally, I felt hurt over it. I also secretly wondered at the fact that they had watched an educational show like Sesame Street and had only taken from the experience yet another way to be cruel.

I was heavy as a teenager. I’m 5’8”, and have been since the fifth grade. My build is broader than it is feminine, and I have been graced or plagued, depending on the day, with somewhat distinctive features. My nose is crooked. My neighbor hit me on the face with a Tonka truck when we were both four. (It was only fair, though, since I’d hit him first.) My hair is a horror all its own. It is frizzy and and looks untidy on a good day. Did I mention that I’m the only person on my mom’s side of the family with curly hair? 

As a kid, I wondered what it was about me that made me a target. I was overweight, sure, but there were certainly fatter kids at school who didn’t get picked on. There were other girls with crooked noses, bad hair, and other atrocious characteristics who never heard a word about it. (Honestly, I asked them!)

Over the years, I have had small revelations regarding the fact that I don’t fit in. One thing that has always struck me as odd is that I speak differently from other El Pasoans. People from that region tend to either have a twangy Texan accent, or a Spanish-tinged accent. I have neither. I have been accused of trying to “sound white”.  Trust me when I say that I would never try to sound like anything other than what I am.

When I was born, my parents decided that they wouldn’t speak to me in Spanish. They’d had a difficult time in school because they only ever heard Spanish at home. They weren’t used to speaking English, and struggling to function in this other language was a daily torture. So they decided to spare me. 

My mom watched Sesame Street with me from the time I was able to hold my head up. When I was a bit older, we watched anything that was on, all of it in English. I basically learned to speak as my mom strengthened her English -- while watching television. As I recall, people on t.v. in the 70’s and 80‘s mostly spoke the kind of English that news anchors speak, and that is what I learned.

I never had to worry about understanding English in school. At the same time, I didn't just speak English. I spoke it well, and this was a burden. I tried in middle school to deflect some of the criticism by incorporating the Mexican slang some of the kids used, but it didn’t fly. I felt like an imposter and just reverted to using the words I was comfortable with.

A few months ago, I watched an episode from the nature series Living Planet. One of the creatures featured is a caterpillar that fights off preying ants by placing a dot of smelly slime on the head of its predator. When the ant returns to the nest, the other ants are unable to recognize it as one of their own, and in turn attack it. Sure, I applauded the caterpillar’s ingenuity, but at the same time, I felt deeply for the ant. 

Finally, in high school, I figured that since I couldn’t defeat the things that separated me from the normal kids, I would embrace them. I wore black lipstick, pierced my nose (on my own, in my room at home) and listened to Morrissey. I made it my mission to stand out, and in the process, I was able to embrace the perspective that living on the outside lines provided. I also picked up a vocabulary and a love for a clever turn of phrase.

Some things about me have changed since those days. I no longer dress with the sole purpose of setting myself apart anymore. I simply wear what I like. Popularity is something that never factors into my decisions. This has been the best blessing of all. I didn’t initially choose to be different, but I am thankful for the insight it has afforded me. Instead of trying to fit in through most of my adolescence, I spent that time getting to know myself. I didn’t enter my 20’s confused and searching for an identity, and I was able to simply go about the business of living life. 

Just Belong

My daughter had a friend over yesterday afternoon. This little girl, who I’ll call Kay, is a great kid -- funny, smart, a sweet girl all around. My Noel is all of those things, too, but in a way, she seems like an entirely different girl.

Noel has a confidence about her that is absent in Kay. When I first met Kay three years ago, back when the girls were in first grade, I recognized it immediately. There was something about her that reminded me of myself.

I later came to realize that Kay’s parents are from Mexico. They moved here, to the Austin area, ten years ago, just before Kay was born. It’s a story that others can see themselves in, if not directly, then from old family stories that have been told and retold. Kay’s parents made the move because they wanted a better life for their children. It wasn’t that life in Mexico was bad. After all, that’s where they are from (and where you’re from is one thing that you can never change about yourself). Still, they knew life in the U.S. would be better. 

I wonder if people who have never lived at the border that separates the United States from Mexico ever wonder about it. Do they feel like I felt when we were discussing proofs in geometry class in high school? Is the subject just too abstract to grasp? I can’t imagine being able to formulate that border in my head, and all that comes with it, without knowing it in person. I grew up about a five minute drive from the border, and physically, it’s a line that separates, a mere fence. 

The thing is, though, once you cross it, coming over from Mexico, you carry that border with you everywhere you go. You take it out and place it on the floor of the restaurant as you eat dinner. Its presence can be felt when you’re shopping for groceries, and it’s your turn to pay and talk to the cashier. There is a heavy “them and us” division the border imposes. Even though you’re paying the same price for goods and services as everyone else, you question whether you deserve to be there. So you try to make yourself as small as you can. You tell your kids that while you’re out, they need to be on their absolute best behavior. You shun attention.

Everyday, opening up the mail can be like facing down a new obstacle. There is a  pressing fear regarding correspondence that has an official appearance. I was born in El Paso, and I guess that’s close enough to Mexico. Still, the fact that I was born on this side of that dividing line allowed me to move about baggage-free, and so I don’t get why anyone would be afraid of the mail. My mom, who was born a few minutes away, but on the other side of the line, feels that perhaps people like Kay’s mom are afraid someone will question their right to be here.

You try your best to obey the laws -- all of them, even the inconvenient ones. We’re in Texas, the land of turning the road’s shoulder into a turning lane. Bike lanes and cyclists be damned! Still, that border follows you everywhere, so you wait until that part of the road officially becomes a turning lane before moving over. 

Kay’s mom was involved in a car accident just before Christmas last year. She had been driving her two kids home from school, and a car that missed a stop sign slammed into hers. The driver was a teenager who had been too distracted by his buddies in the car to pay attention to the stop sign. I would have been enraged. Kay's mom was instead afraid of the police officers who showed up at the scene of the accident. It was clear that they sympathized with her, but that fear of the police is something she hasn’t been able to shed. 

So the first time I met Kay, she seemed a bit timid, unlike most of my daughter’s friends. Of course, she was extremely gracious, saying “thank you” when she was offered a drink or a snack. When she was offered both, she thanked me twice. Graciousness is one thing, but there was a nervousness as well. It was clear that here was a child who was keenly aware of where she comes from, of her place in this world. 

I recently divulged to my husband that the first time I went into a Dillard’s was when I was 19 years old. My mom had always shopped at Kmart, and then later Wal-Mart. Even when we had to go to the mall, she parked outside Sears or Montgomery Ward, which were still plenty fancy for her. Stores like Dillard’s were for rich people, los Americanos, and going in there was simply not an option. I don’t know for sure, but I’m fairly certain my mom never even shops at Target, and she still doesn’t go into Dillard’s. 

I’m a second-generation American, since my dad was born here, and I don’t recall a time when I wasn’t aware of my surroundings and whether I belonged. Fortunately, I’ve been able to shed some of the nervousness. Living in different parts of this country, specifically Virginia, where my right to be there was questioned, at the very least, on a weekly basis, probably helped that progress. Maybe after having to defend my place in this country to strangers, I was finally able to convince myself.

I am overjoyed that my daughter doesn’t know any way to be, other than just belonging. I’ll admit, Kay’s timidity, before I was able to pinpoint its source, was charming. Perhaps it was disarming, at a time when so many children seem to brandish a sense of entitlement. No one should feel entitled, but we should all be able to feel like we belong. It is my wish that Kay will one day also accept the fact that she belongs, and that she is at home wherever she is. After all, a person’s station is not a static thing, nor is it all-defining.

Eleanor Rigby

We were in the middle of rush hour traffic in north Austin. I had my iPod hooked up to the car, on shuffle. I was too busy paying attention to the speed, direction and general craziness of the cars around me to focus on the song that was playing. Seemingly out of the blue, Toby, my 11 year old, asked me, “Mom, where do all the lonely people come from?” What?

Outgoing Message

I would sometimes find myself calling my parents’ house when I knew my mom was at work. When he died, and she’d had to start cutting back on unnecessary expenses, one of the first things to go had been Caller ID. She’d scaled back to the most basic phone service she could get. She kept the number, and she left the old outgoing message on the answering machine. 

My mom asked me about it once, wondering aloud about whether she should update the message, so that it might reflect current circumstances. It seemed rather brazen to me -- facing current circumstances, I mean. I don’t recall exactly what I said to her -- something along the lines of, Oh, you should leave it. I’d mentioned that it’s best for a woman who lives alone to have a man’s voice on her machine.

I probably should have said something more specific, made a plea. Mom had spent years with him, their entire adult lives. She missed him, but she’d seen him until the very end.

I’d only seen him sporadically during the last 13 years. There had been years, maybe two or three, after I’d had the kids and he was still drinking heavily, that I didn’t speak to him -- not at all. At times, if I allow myself to sink into those dark, true, thoughts, I feel like kicking myself. I do kick myself, internally. I call myself names, like “shit-head” or “jerk”. Still, after the self-flagellation, I always come to the conclusion that things would never have progressed to a wider state of acceptance, even if I had tried, if I had done all of the right things. For the longest time, doing right by my children and by myself, well -- it wasn’t simpatico with doing right by him.

I had been the black sheep anyway. I was an only child for the first four years of my life. I was the apple of my dad’s eye, his pumpkin, his t.v. companion. Then Little Sister came along a month after I turned four and changed the whole dynamic. I was now Big Sister, Older Sibling, and he didn’t like me as much anymore. He’d been pushed around by his favored big brother, the one with the green eyes (which made you golden in the Mexican culture). From then on, when he looked at me, he saw Bobby. I’d fought against the unfairness of it at first, and then I just resigned myself to the way things were. 

I once watched a David Attenborough feature in which he discusses the volcanic activity beneath the ocean floor, specifically the Midatlantic Ridge. He talks about how South America and Africa were once part of a much larger continent, Gondwana. Nowadays, they’re separate continents that continue to be pushed apart by a growing expanse of ocean floor. It made me think of how we used to share a recliner when I was little, watching t.v. late into the night, sharing pork rinds. Then, seemingly overnight, there was that distance between us, ever-growing. Most kids don’t feel this until they’re teenagers, but it’s normal then. 

Who knows if Gondwana, or anything like it, will ever exist again. India keeps pushing up against Asia, at a rate of 2 inches a year, so I guess the activity beneath the ocean floor works to bring some things together, as well as to push others apart. Perhaps if I hadn’t grown up with those ridges, I wouldn’t be so focused on making sure that gulf doesn’t exist in my own family.

Still, perhaps it’s because I was born in this country, the land of opportunity, that nearly a year later, I still mourn. I made myself think about it one day, about what exactly it is that I’m grieving. (It’s so easy to just call that pain grief and then work on going about the task at hand.) I’ve never been the type of person who talks about the dead with a reverence that does not befit the deceased. He was deeply flawed, but I loved him. I still do love him. More specifically, though, I’m mournful over the end of opportunity. There is no longer a chance that we can get it together and look past old injuries. 

It occurs to me that I could have let Mom know that I had come to rely on that outgoing message on her machine. She probably would have saved it for me to record on my next visit. Instead, I was passive, and she had no idea that I called her machine to hear my dad’s voice “one more time”. Each time I did this, I assured myself that I was just doing it “one more time”. 

That Sunday, a few months after my dad’s death, the phone rang. The number that came up on Caller ID was one I didn’t recognize. I saw the 915 area code, meaning El Paso, and answered anyway. It was Mom. She was calling to let me know that she’d changed her phone number. There were too many calls from bill-collectors, and she was tired of telling strangers that her husband had died. Somehow, I managed to ask, in a nonchalant manner, whether she’d gotten around to changing the outgoing message as well. She had. 

After I hung up with Mom, I sat and thought about why I didn’t mention my strange calling habits to her during our conversation this time. It wouldn’t have been out of the blue, and she surely would have understood. Perhaps I had engaged in this behavior, knowing that it would have to stop one day. It reminds me of people who eat locally grown produce. They eat strawberries when they are in season, and are grateful for the natural sweetness each bite imparts. I should be grateful as well.